Your employees are the most important asset of your business and managing them well is critical to the success of the business, albeit challenging. Especially among small businesses, employee motivation is a major concern because lack of productivity could translate to lack of the growth the business needs. However, you cannot pin all blame on employees if their productivity is low.
As the employer, you have the most important role in motivating your workforce to enhance productivity. Some of the things that lower productivity among employees include low self-confidence, lack of interest, low expectations for success, fear of failure and achievement anxiety to mention a few. To ensure your employees give the best, here are motivation strategies your small business can implement to boost productivity.
Employee empowerment
Empowering your employees is one of the best ways though which you can boost their motivation and eventually productivity. Using this strategy diminishes frustrations that come from being questioned for things like lack of control over some matters. The employees are made to feel part of the business and as a result will strive to ensure everything is packaged in the right manner. Make them understand that as long as the business keeps growing, they achieve much and can celebrate growth as well. Empowering your workforce diverts their energy from self-preservation to improved task accomplishment.
Offer learning opportunities
There are valid reasons why multinationals and established enterprises invest in offering learning opportunities to their employees. This is a perfect employee retention strategy that also comes with the motivation to achieve more through skill enhancement. Give them opportunities they can use to acquire new skills and many employees will be motivated to embrace the offer. With employees who have more skills, you can be assured of enhanced accuracy levels and efficiency in production. However, while offering learning opportunities, ensure this acquisition of knowledge is relevant to the kind of tasks they accomplish each day, otherwise it will translate to no benefits to the business.
Encourage creativity and innovation
As Brian Speier cites, small businesses can motivate their employees to boost productivity by encouraging them to embrace creativity and innovation. Most employees have creative ideas that once offered an opportunity, will not hesitate to apply. Offer an open platform that recognizes the effort of each employee and allow them to come up with other ways of doing things and you will be surprised at how good your employees can be when given a chance to steer production. You can also encourage the exchange of ideas and information among employees or departments. Doing so will make them feel wanted and valued, which boosts their motivation at work.
Offer financial incentives
A 2014 survey conducted by SHRM revealed that compensation/pay topped the list of things that contributed to employee satisfaction. Money comes in handy as a perfect tool that motivates employees to increase their productivity. Therefore, you should come up with a plan where employees can be allowed to get a share of the profit the company earns. This makes them part of the company and they will definitely put more effort in a bid to raise the incentives they receive when profit is declared.
